Gardening’s Unique Potential for Healing Trauma

There is a good chance that you either are a gardener, you live with one or you know one. As such, you know that whether you are tending to potted geraniums on the deck, prizing the tomatoes in your yard or creating a lush horticultural expanse…there is something about gardening.

With radiocarbon dating revealing that horticultural activity began c 9,000 BCE in an area close to the Dead Sea, and contention with whether the first garden was in China or Egypt, suffice it to say–we have been gardening for a long time.

Why We Garden?

Many have explained this proclivity to gardening in terms of our primal urge to commune with nature, a sense of awe at beauty beyond man’s capacity to create, an urge to feel solitude apart from the maddening crowd, etc.…

While always implied, there is also increasing discussion of the mental health benefits of gardening. It is no surprise that for years people in and outside of my office have pointed to gardening as their stress reducing activity. In fact, a recent study in the Netherlands suggests that gardening can fight stress even better than other relaxing leisure activities.

Gardening in the Aftermath of Trauma

Adding to this and particularly important in a world that continues to experience and witness natural and man-made disaster and atrocity is the consideration of gardening’s potential in healing the impact of trauma.

Renowned writer and horticulturalist, Irene Virag, poignantly describes the role of gardening in her journey with breast cancer.

Veterans in The Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System operate a 15-acre VA garden of beauty and sellable bounty as part of a horticultural therapy program, which has reduced depression and psychiatric hospitalizations.

A New York Times article, “ Seeking Serenity in a Patch of California Land,” reports on gardening as a source of healing trauma. Bridging diverse cultures not accustomed to traditional therapy, the mental health department set aside gardens to address the depression, suicidal thinking and post-traumatic stress of immigrants and refugees isolated by language, poverty, memories of war, rape and starvation.

Does Gardening Really Have the Potential to Heal Trauma?

When you consider some essential characteristics of gardening in counter-position to trauma’s impact on the core self, it seems that gardening may be a unique source of restoration and healing. Consider these possibilities:

From Vulnerable to Verdant

In face of traumatic events, be they the loss of a child or the devastation from fire or flood, we feel a profound sense of powerlessness. We are robbed of a familiar self who knows how to problem solve, move, help, and protect those we love.

In the garden there is some relief from the sense of helplessness because there is less risk in daring to make something happen. We don’t go into the garden to reset a sense of purpose or power. Rather, enjoying what is often a reprieve from shame, self-blame, crying or worrying, we find that plants and flowers are gentle company. They embrace us and allow us to engage without judgment. They even grow with partial plastic seed paks still attached! The garden resets the possibility that our touch can make something positive possible.

From Trauma Time to Nature’s Time

Traumatic events disrupt our continuity of time. At the time of an assault, people report that time “ stands still.” It has lost relevancy because a traumatic event is by definition “ out of sync” with life. In the aftermath, the impact for many is to feel frozen in the traumatic moment. The past is irrelevant and the future beyond access. Time becomes defined by trauma–before or after the storm, the accident, or the war.

In the garden, nature keeps its own time. A crocus blooms in a pile of broken tree limbs after the hurricane, reminding us that spring will arrive—no mater what. A young woman tells me that the wild blue flowers that showed up in her overgrown garden the summer her mother died gave her permission to remember that she loved summer. Whether conscious or not, gardening helps us reset time.

“He who plants, believes in the future.”

From Negative Sensations To Nature’s Sensations

Given that we respond to traumatic events with the human survival responses of fight, flight and numbing, trauma experts like Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine suggest that we suffer because we cannot “ shake off” the body’s readiness for danger, or the traumatic memories carried in flashbacks, tactile sensations or sensory reactivity to reminders of the event.

In the garden, the physical exertion of gardening allows the body an opportunity to re-direct hyperarousal, to experience movement, heavy breathing, even perspiration for good reason. The stimulation of the senses by the fragrances, visual beauty and physical touch inherent in gardening are powerful antidotes to the negative sensations that re-terrify and fuel avoidance of life after trauma.

To be startled over and over again by the fragrance of roses, the hint of honeysuckle or the beauty of a dogwood tree is to re-claim one’s senses.

From Lost and to Found in Nature

Trauma expert, Robert Stolorow tells us that basic to the experience of psychological trauma is a “dreadful sense of estrangement and isolation” that compromises connection and recovery. Central to this sense of estrangement is the lost connection with self.

In the garden, there is the opportunity to do what needs to be done to find and restore self–essentially, to lose oneself in the moment. Much as the runner finds in “ the zone” and those who meditate find in opening an inner space for self, getting lost in gardening equates to connection beyond consciousness, to fining a self that can feel peace and self-soothing again.

Given the opportunity to garden, refugees who have suffered loss, war and despair report:

It beings peace, so I do not forget who I am.

You feel the world in this place and it brings you back home

From Assaulted Belief to Nature’s Transformation

While spirituality serves as an important resource for many after trauma, others feel that what has happened calls into question their belief in God. For those who feel their belief has been assaulted, their pain is great as they are bereft of their usual source of hope and soothing at a time they need it most.

In the garden, no organized religion has ownership. What people feel from being steeped in nature is often described as transformative of heart and soul. For some, such transformation feels sacred. However it transforms or inspires, being with nature often re-kindles or redefines belief. A young man, who lost his wife, was not religious in any way but shared that at great moments of despair, he felt surprising relief standing in his garden watching the sunset.

“ I felt less alone and reassured that I could still count on something to ease the pain.”

About Suzanne Phillips, Psy.D., ABPP

Suzanne B. Phillips, Psy.D., ABPP is a licensed psychologist. She is Adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Doctoral Program of Long Island University and on the faculty of the Post-Doctoral Programs of the Derner Institute of Adelphi University. Suzanne Phillips, PsyD and Dianne Kane are the authors of Healing Together: A Couple's Guide to Coping with Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress.
Learn more about their work at couplesaftertrauma.com
. Visit Suzanne's Facebook Page HERE.